The restaurant social servicescape: Establishing a nomological framework

Understanding the effects of the service environment on consumption behavior has become an important topic of research in the hospitality literature in recent years. While much of the initial research in this stream has focused on the effects of the physical aspects of the consumption space (e.g., décor, layout, lighting, etc.), a number of more recent studies have proposed that, like these physical factors, social phenomena may exert a significant effect on consumer behavior. The purpose of this research is to test these propositions. Defined as the social servicescape, social aspects of the consumption environment including customer/employee behavior, appearance, and perceived similarity, are hypothesized to exert a meaningful effect on evaluations of the full-service dining experience. The results support the proposed framework, demonstrating the social servicescape as a robust predictor of attitude, satisfaction, and post-consumption behavioral intentions, including return intention and word of mouth.